back in the early 90s, i only knew of four ways to get new computer games:
- buying my own (i could afford a new one every 3-6 months at best)
- trading with friends (only 3 kids in my school had computers at home)
- buying shareware diskettes at the grocery store for a few bucks
- downloading shareware from local BBSes
of all of the above, only the last two were reliable sources of new games every week. i was one of the only kids in the school that had a modem, so i spent every evening sourcing out hot new shareware on my local boards. i’d wear out my credits and time limits downloading every single disk i could find at 2400 baud, usually taking about an hour
of the dozens of games I downloaded, two of them proved to be mega-hits: Tank Wars and Crystal Caves. for over a year, my two best friends and i huddled around the computer playing hotseat tank wars, and took turns trying to finish CC levels.
consider that, at the time, we owned AAA titles like Wing Commander II and Space Quest IV, and a sega genesis with a dozen games between us. and yet, crystal caves was the first thing we’d load up on sleepovers. it found the exact right balance of addictive, fun and friendly.
a few years ago i started collecting old shareware distributor diskettes - the kind you’d find for $2 at a grocery store. and i absolutely treasure them. 🙏
#apogee #shareware #retroGaming #dosgaming
How about mid 80’s and manually inputting code from Compute! magazine!
Image from an ArsTechnica post celebrating (?) the process…
I took a computer programming class during summer school in junior high, and learned to write BASIC, which is the language shown in this picture. Can you imagine copying 5000 lines of BASIC from a magazine, with no IDE, no syntax highlighting, and no way to figure out where your inevitable typo is?
How long did it take to get the program typed correctly? I can’t believe they were able to make that sort of game with BASIC. That’s actually pretty impressive.
Ah numbered lines of code. You would number them by 10’s so you would have 9 empty lines for troubleshooting and fixes in between. Often that would entail a “goto” command to skip a line completely. Memories!
I absolutely loved Crystal caves. There were so many cool games on shareware disks, and the best way to do it was to try them all. Some were real stinkers but that was part of the experience.
It also developed special skills at playing with config.sys, autoexec.bat, and sound card parameters. SET BLASTER=A220 anyone?
@vga256@dialup.cafe Love these stories. I lived similarly! One night, someone uploaded the (commercial) hockey game “Hat Trick” for DOS to a non-pirate BBS, and the SysOp either didn’t know or didn’t care that time and I downloaded it in shock, unable to believe the free game I was getting at 2400 baud, hahah. (Hat Trick rocked, too.)
@vga256@dialup.cafe I remember for weeks after buying the shareware version, my friends and I would draw made-up new crystal caves levels and enemies in the art classroom during school lunch breaks 😌